PROMISING DAY 1 FOR TEAM SUZUKI ECSTAR AT ARAGON

• Andrea Iannone fast in both sessions.
• Alex Rins feeling positive for days ahead.
• Hot track and tight lap times on Day 1.

The first day of action at Motorland Aragon in central Spain was a positive and promising one for Team SUZUKI ECSTAR as both riders reported good feelings and both are known to enjoy the varied and tricky track. A hot start to proceedings saw tight lap times in FP1 where Iannone and Rins finished 10th and 11th respectively.

In FP2 the mercury was rising and the track reached 43c. Andrea Iannone got off to a great start and topped the session, he held this position for a decent portion of FP2 and eventually finished 5th as others pushed for fast laps. Meanwhile, Alex Rins started well and was in the provisional Top 10 until he switched his focus to set-up and dropped to 16th. Tomorrow morning’s FP3 session with cooler conditions is likely to see riders go even faster, so Q1 and Q2 places are expected to be decided then.

Davide Brivio - Team Manager
“Overall I’d say it’s been a positive day. Andrea showed good pace this morning and again this afternoon, he’s in fifth position and we’re working to make him feel more comfortable on the bike, but he has good speed. Alex also did a good job today, working a lot on race preparation and trying different tyres. Tomorrow morning we’ll put in the effort to try and stay in the Top 10, but today it was important to work on other areas so I think we’ve done a good job. We’ll check some data tonight and then look forward to continuing tomorrow.”

Andrea Iannone
“We’ve started in a good direction; good pace with the bike and good feeling. It’s important that we improve on the braking points at angle a bit and the tyre drop-off. I tried the medium and the hard rear and we lost a bit of time with the degradation. We’ll try to fix these issues tomorrow and have a good day.”

Alex Rins
“It was a positive Friday compared with other recent opening days. We know that we’re not in the top positions, but we’re using a different mentality and we tried a lot of things today including many different tyre options. Usually I prefer a medium or soft front but I also like the hard front tyre here. So it’s difficult to find the right balance with the tyre degradation. Tomorrow we’ll do another big step on lap times because today we didn’t use soft tyres to set a fast lap. I hope I can do a good qualifying tomorrow and get a good position for the race.”